RE: CRT gun driver levels?

> The standard B&W Cine' game uses two intensity levels and OFF,
> Sundance used 16
> levels and OFF, Solar Quest used 64 level and OFF.
>
Cool. That jives with what I'm seeing in spice...

> The DACs for both Sundance and Solar quest was made from discrete HV
> transistor
> (4 for Sundance, 6 for Solar Quest) that adjusted the 90v brightness
> line
> directly. Though for a Cine to WG it won't make any difference to the
> software
> how the intensities are handled hardware wise.
>
Right. How big of deal is the intensity stuff in SD and SQ? Will they
work OK w/out the different intensities?

> What will make a difference will be the software -> hardware
> interface. The
> intensities were set by setting up the X-DAC position, then strobe the
> line
> normally used to set the High/Low intensity in a normal Cine' game.
> The X-DAC
> itself is not involved with the intensity circuit. It just shares the
> same data
> lines.
>
How was "off" controlled in the standard game? Separate line?

> Sundance and Solar Quest are not compatible (Solar Quest's 64 colors
> is not a
> superset of Sundance's 16 colors). The logic levels are reversed and
> different
> data lines were used for the address.
>
Ahhh, maybe that answers my earlier question...

        [...]
> If you get serious about needing this information I'll write up a
> short
> description of what data lines are the MSB, Colors, Logic Levels, etc.
> so you
> won't have to wade through the CINEINST.TXT doc. (It should all be in
> there.)
>
I think Mark is planning something fancier, but I was kinda thinking
about a simple Cine->WG version that was just "dual intensity" that
could be popped into an Asteroids cabinet (or something) and work with
Mark's multigame and the Asteroids board.

-Clay
Received on Fri Aug 21 14:20:27 1998